proved the will June 30, 1561. A Richard Shaxspere was one of the witnesses.

There are some important omissions in Mr. Malone's account of the will of John Shakspere, of Rowington, or Rownton, as it stands in the will, made in 1574. He gives his son Thomas £20, his son George his free land in Shrewley, his daughter Annis 15 marks to her marriage; his aunt Ley, the midwife, is to have a bushel of corn. He speaks of two brothers, named Nicholas and Thomas, and makes his wife Ellinor executor. The inventory of his goods has the total £67. 48. 6d.

Richard Shakespeare, the elder, of Rowington, whose will, 1591, is also abstracted by Mr. Malone, was a turner.' Beside the four sons, John, Roger, Thomas, and William, whom Mr. Malone names, he had a daughter named Dorothy Jenks; and the will of another Richard, of Rowington, made in 1613, supplies other information for the genealogy beside that which is extracted by Mr. Malone, as it gives the names of the four sons of his son Richard, which were Thomas, William, Richard, and John, who were then all under fifteen years of age. This Richard desires to be buried in the church or church-yard of Rowington, a slight indication of some advancement of the family, all before having been content to lie outside the walls of the church.

There is at Worcester another will of a member of this branch of the family, of the same year with the preceding, namely, that of Thomas Shaxsper, of Mowsley End, in Rowington. He desires to be buried in the church or churchyard; he names his wife Annis, his son John, who is to pay £20, due to his (John's) uncle John Scott. He names two other sons, Thomas and Richard, and three daughters, Ellinor, Joan, and Annis, to each of whom he leaves £20.

From the 41st of Elizabeth, 1597-8, to the 22d of James

the First, 1624-5, a Thomas Shakesper, probably the person whose will is just noticed, and his son of the same name, are the only persons assessed to the subsidies at Rowington.

Mr. Malone shews the continuance of Shakespeares at Rowington to his own time; and some years ago various original deeds of the family were offered for sale.

On the whole we may collect from such evidence as remains, that in the half-century before the time when the Shakespeares first appear at Stratford, there were three families of the name in that vicinity, and no more: others who have been mentioned, seated in other places, appearing to have been rather casual and transient inhabitants than members. of a genealogical series of Shakespeares located on the spot. The three families are those of Wroxhall, Warwick, and Rowington, all of whom may be traced back into the period of time when we are to seek for the poet's grandfather, the main object in this inquiry, and all continuing during the time that the poet's father was laying the foundation of another family at Stratford, and even all continuing to exist in the same places during the whole life of him who was giving to the name its imperishable celebrity. In one of these three families the grandfather, whoever he was, is to be found. I have ventured to express my own opinion, that he was of the Shakespeares of Wroxhall. That he was not of the Shakespeares of Warwick is clear; and if of the Shakespeares of Rowington, the Shakespeares of Stratford could hardly have escaped notice in some of their many wills. Yet it must be admitted, that the names of John, William, and Richard occur in the Rowington branch as well as in that which was planted at Wroxhall.

Mr. Malone was unquestionably right when he delivered his opinion, founded on the examination of many documents,

C

that there was no Shakespeare at Stratford before the settlement in that town of John, the father of the poet. Respecting the precise time when John settled at Stratford he speaks vaguely, thus:-"John Shakespeare, wherever he may have been born, settled at Stratford not very long after the year 1550; for in the middle of the year 1555 a suit was instituted against him in the Bailiff's Court."* It may be more precisely stated thus:-his name does not appear among the persons assessed at Stratford to the payment of the relief granted in the third of Edward the Sixth, 1549-50; but at the Court of our Lord the King for the burgh of Stratford, held on April 29, in the sixth of Edward the Sixth, 1552, we do find his name. So that, unless he was there as a boy, we may without much chance of error fix upon the year 1551 as that in which the family first came to Stratford.

The passage in the Court Roll must be extracted, as there is another fact of some importance to be collected from it. "Item, juratores present. super sacramentum suum quod Humphridus + Reynolds (xiid.), Adrianus Quyney (xiid.), et Johannes Shakyspere (xiid.), fecerunt sterquinarium in vico vocato Hendley Strete contra ordinationes Curiæ. Ideo ipsi in misericordiâ." The fact is this: that here we have very probable evidence that John Shakespeare lived, in 1552, in that part of the town known as Henley Street, where is situated the house which, by constant tradition, is said to have been the poet's birth-place. This is the best support ever given to the tradition. He had for his neighbours, Reynolds and Quiney, both persons of the better condition at Stratford, municipal names, and both of families living for a

*Boswell's Malone, vol. ii. p. 49.

†The name of Hugh Reynolds appears so frequently in documents relating to Stratford at this period, that there may be presumed to be in this case a clerical error in the record quoted.

long time on terms of intimacy with the Shakespeares, as may be inferred from a legacy being left by the poet to William Reynolds, and from Shakespeare's daughter, Judith, becoming the wife of Thomas Quiney.

We have the best possible evidence that this John Shakespeare married Mary, daughter and coheiress of Robert Arden, a gentleman who lived at Wilmecote, a village near Stratford; the fact being set forth in the draft of an intended grant of arms to John Shakespeare by Sir William Dethick, Garter King at Arms, in 1596. The precise date of this marriage has never been ascertained; but Mr. Malone's inference from the will of the lady's father seems to be correct, that the marriage had not taken place at the time when the will was made, November 24, 1556. The will was proved on the 17th of December following, and during this interval Robert Arden must have died. The eldest known issue of the marriage was a daughter named Joan, who was baptized at Stratford, on September 15, 1558. The year 1557 may, therefore, with some confidence, be assigned as the year of the marriage, that is, immediately on the lady's entering into possession of the property, which was not inconsiderable, left to her by her father.

I shall speak hereafter of the Ardens, but there is still one point more in the early, or what may be called the antiquarian history of the Shakespeare family, on which something must be said: the supposed grant to an ancestor of John Shakespeare of lands and tenements in Warwickshire, for service rendered to King Henry the Seventh. From 1596 to 1599, which was at a time when Shakespeare was in the plenitude of his fame as a dramatic writer, there were communications between his family and the College of Arms, touching a grant of coat-armour. The application was made on behalf of John Shakespeare the father. There can be no

doubt that a grant was made accordingly, indeed the fact is distinctly stated in official papers, though no formal copy of a grant exists, and we find only three paper drafts, or rather studies for the grant, confusedly written, being all full of corrections and interlined matter.

The first of these is dated in 1596. This is No. 23 of the Manuscript known as 'Vincent,' No. 157. Mr. Malone's copy* is not quite exact; and the clause of which we are speaking ought to have been printed thus:-" Being therefore solicited, and by credible report informed that John Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the countie of Warwick, whose [parents and late] antecessors were for there valeant and faithfull services advaunced and rewarded by the most prudent prince King Henry the Seventh, of famous memorie, sithence which time they have continewed at those parts in good reputation and credit," &c. The words placed in crotchets are interlined.†

This is followed in the same MS. volume by another draft, No. 24, very like the former, but not exactly agreeing with it, having the same date, October 20, in the 38th of Elizabeth. This document is unfortunately imperfect in the clause which is now under consideration; but enough remains to shew that the herald who drew it had no very precise information on the point, for, though it is evident that the gift is referred to King Henry the Seventh, yet the person or

* Boswell's Malone, vol. ii. p. 541.

It is extraordinary that Mr. Malone's copy should not contain the clause which follows the word 'margant.' 66 Signifiing hereby that it shalbe lawfull for the said John Shakespeare, gent. and for his children yssue and posterité, at all tymes convenient, to make shewe of and to have blazoned the same achevement on theyre sheeld or cote of arms, [crests, cognizances] escutcheons, seals, rings, signets, penons, guydons, edifyces, utensils, liveries, tombs, and monuments, or otherwise....in all lawful warlike facts or civile use and exercises, according to the Lawes of Arms, without lett or interruption of any other person or persons."